Prior to the present invention, the display elements, typically light emitting diode (LED) digits, were separately mounted to the case of a hand-held calculator, or a display printed circuit board mounting a plurality of LED digits was separately mounted within the calculator housing or case. The individual interconnections between the main circuit board, which typically included power, control, driving and logic circuitry for the calculator, and the display elements were conventionally accomplished by hand soldering of individual terminals on the main circuit board to individual terminals on either the LED digits or the LED printed circuit board. As a consequence of the independent mounting of the display electronics and the logic circuitry, and the required semipermanent hand soldering of these elements, the assembly was costly and incurred a relatively high risk of loss during the assembly operation of the LED digits or display assembly. Such loss required the hand soldering removal of the digits if the logic board was to be salvaged, so that the cost of such repair was often prohibitive. Likewise, the replacement during manufacture or service maintenance of the display assembly required a high risk hand soldering operation which was relatively expensive. In addition, the prior art provides no adequate means for mounting the display digits or printed circuit board at an accurately controlled angle relative the main logic board. Since LED digits have relatively limited viewing angles, the mechanical mounting within the calculator case of these elements is critical.
Due to the hand soldering techniques used in conventional calculator assembly, the overall size of the interconnection is bulky and therefore presents an undesirable restraint upon the case configuration.